More than 1,000 IRS workers who failed to pay their taxes still received performance bonuses.

In all, 28,000 tax workers with substantiated conduct issues collected $2.8 million in bonuses for 2011 and 2012.

Andrew Biggs with the American Enterprise Institute generally favors performance bonuses for federal employees. But, Biggs says, “it is difficult to have employees working for the IRS who didn’t in fact pay their own taxes. That undermines the credibility of the agency as a whole.”

The IRS is considering a policy change.

But in order to make conduct issues affect performance bonuses, the IRS must negotiate a new agreement with the National Treasury Employees Union.